The 7 Most Horrifying Museums on Earth

#3. The Vent Haven Ventriloquist Museum

Everyone is scared of ventriloquist dummies. Like clowns, they're the result of a serious miscalculation about the desirable elements of children's entertainment. Most people wouldn't want to be alone in a room with one. Go to the Vent Haven Museum in Kentucky, though, and you can be alone in a room with 750 of them.

"You're in our house..."

The collection was started by a guy named, no joke, William Shakespeare Berger - an amateur ventriloquist and wealthy tycoon, who wound up blowing his vast fortune acquiring over 500 of these monsters up until the day he died. Whether Berger was controlling the dummies or vice-versa is a matter for debate.

The family portrait.

One of the museum's notable acquisitions is the collection of famed ventriloquist William Wood, who was once billed as "the world's greatest ventriloquist" until he died in a freak boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico. (Yeah, "accident.") Four of his six dummies are on display at the museum, while the other two were lost at sea, no doubt while dragging William Wood to the bottom of the ocean by each pant leg.

The Vent Haven Ventriloquist Museum has gone on to become the largest collection of ventriloquist dummies in the world, and all it required was a wealthy tycoon named William Shakespeare to tragically outlive his wife, his son, his grandson and thus find himself without any living heirs. Yes, we must specify living heirs.

#2. The Icelandic Phallological Museum

Gentlemen, how many of you are so proud of your genitalia that you honestly think it belongs in a museum? Well, just take a trip to the frozen north and check out the Icelandic Phallological Museum: the only museum in the world dedicated exclusively to cock.

The brainchild of former history teacher and self-proclaimed "phallologist" Sigurdur Hjartarson...

...the Icelandic Phallological Museum includes the penises of more than 100 mammals. In addition to these exhibits, its curator has branched out to other terrifying acquisitions. For example, these lamps are made out of balls.

The museum's extensive art collection includes penile paintings, lamps, phones and plenty of other trinkets suitable for any bachelorette party. It also boasts penile specimens from various mythical characters such as elves, trolls and monsters. For example, have you ever wondered what Elmo's dick looks like? Well, guess what?

So has Sigurdur Hjartarson.

However, any male with a fully fictional flagstaff that enters the Icelandic Phallological Museum should be warned that its sadistic curator has gone to lengths comparable only to horror movies to expand his vast collection. For example, whenever some unfortunate whale gets beached on any of Iceland's 3,000 miles of coastline, you bet your balls (so to speak) that Sigurdur Hjartarson will be there with his axe to obtain the monster's you-know-what.

#1. The Mutter Museum

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia's Mutter Museum is without question the single most terrifying episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not! in history.

Hey, look. A sliced-off face.

Started in 1858 thanks to a donation from Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter, the museum's collection of medical oddities began as an early version of Rotten.com. If you wanted to see the world's biggest pimple or witness the biggest shit ever taken back in the day (for medical purposes, of course) all you needed to do was ask Dr. Mutter, then die a little inside.

The Mutter Museum is the current home of the Hyrtl Skull Collection: a wall of skulls with the oftentimes disturbing, sometimes hilarious descriptions as to how its owner died.

One of them reads "Idiot" for cause of death. Seriously.

This place also features a woman whom Philadelphians affectionately refer to as the Soap Lady...

...a nine-foot-long human colon that once contained over 40 pounds of shit...

...some inside-out babies...

Wait, what the?

...a unicorn...

Or at the very least a unicorn's dong growing out of someone's face.

...this thing...

...and finally, a whole bunch of creepy pictures of various horrible, disfiguring diseases...

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